Andhra Pradesh government is planning to halt the power supply agreement linked to Adani Green Energy, following the US indictment of Gautam Adani and seven other individuals in the alleged bribery scheme.
N Chandrababu Naidu-led state government is considering writing to Solar Energy Corporation of India (SECI) to get the power purchase agreement (PPA) with the company cancelled and recommend a probe by central investigative agency, according to highly-placed state sources in the government, cited in Economic Times.
The government is also considering another option of forming Cabinet sub-committee to investigate the charges while keeping the power supply agreement (PSA) signed with SECI in abeyance. The third option is to completely scrap the PSA.
Earlier, Reuters also reported that the state government is exploring options to cancel the contract. Andhra Pradesh's state government was "digging into all the internal files" from the previous administration, under which the alleged misconduct took place, state Finance Minister Payyavula Keshav told Reuters on Monday.
The chief minister previously said in the Legislative Assembly that allegations against the previous YSR Congress Party government had hurt the state’s brand image. Last week, he had said, “I have all the reports of the indictment filed in the US. We will study them and take action accordingly. We will inform what action we will take.”
In December 2021, Andhra Pradesh government signed an agreement to procure 7,000 megawatts (MW) of solar power through SECI for 25 years in a phased manner.
Majority Bribes Allegedly Paid to Andhra
Gautam Adani and seven other individuals have been charged for making a scheme to pay bribes to the tune of $265mn to state government officials in return of obtaining power supply contracts. The bribes were allegedly paid to Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh and the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir along with discoms in 2021 and 2022.
Most of the alleged bribes—$228mn—were paid to a government official to get Andhra Pradesh's state electricity distribution companies to agree to purchase power, stated the US indictment.
The other company named in the indictment is Azure Power which got the letter of the award in June 2020. Both of them signed the PPA with SECI. However, SECI could not find discoms to buy power as the prices were high. Following this, the bribes were paid as alleged by the US officials.
Adani has termed the allegations as baseless.
